A Note from Fatty:Tomorrow is the last day of the raffles for the Shimano Dura-Ace Wheelset of your choice and the Masi Soulville 10. If you’ve joined Team Fatty but have a balance of $0 in your fundraising page, you should definitely either lean on friends and family or open your own wallet before the end of Friday. Because you can’t win if you haven’t got a ticket. And you get a ticket for every $5.00 you’ve got in your fundraising page.

Really, this post doesn’t belong on my blog, at least as my blog’s mission statement was originally defined.

What, you didn’t know my blog has a mission statement? Of course my blog has a mission statement. Every popular and successful blog has a mission statement. If your blog doesn’t isn’t popular and doesn’t have a mission statement, that probably explains why your blog is not popular. Write a mission statement, adhere to it, and watch your traffic explode (not literally, because that would be both gross and deadly).

For your information, here is the Fat Cyclist Mission Statement:

Fat Cyclist Mission: To provide synergistic excellence through the medium of a holistic and collaborative approach to the creation and extrapolation of (usually self-deprecating) cycling community comedy. Means toward this end include but are not limited to: anecdotal recitation, weight jokes, fake news, ad analysis, petulance, open letters, gushing and absurd praise of things that may or not be praiseworthy (or may be praiseworthy but for reasons other than the received praise), and the occasional limerick. Also, to promote mayonnaise as the best condiment ever.

Truth be told, however, I think it’s safe to say that my blog has been off-mission for quite some time. I do not apologize, but I hereby commit to, in the near future, revising my mission statement to include my expanded focus.

Of course, some of you may be wondering what other cycling blogs have mission statements. Well, I think I can quite nicely prove my point — that a good mission statement can give focus and ensure popularity to a blog — by citing the mission statement for Bike Snob NYC:

Bike Snob NYC Mission: To write 50 words more than the previous day; to read, dissect and ridicule every Craigslist post ever written; and to confound fixie hipsters by making them forever uncertain whether to be flattered or insulted when featured. Or both. Also, to be very, very anonymous, so people won’t find out that he is actually Greg Lemond.

Anyway, this post — the part I’m about to write, not the part I’ve already written — doesn’t even fit within my soon-to-be-revised blog mission. Curiously, however, it does fit nicely within my friend Dug’s blog mission:

And now, 4000 words into today’s post, I am ready to describe yesterday’s event. Which, if you reach waaaay back into your memory, you will recall I mentioned would fit nicely in Dug’s blog.

At Long Last, the Anecdote

I work at home three days out of the week. This lets me stay close to Susan. However, my job has me on the phone pretty often, making it so I am not able to come to the door easily. Thus, I have instructed the nurses who stop by from time to time to just come on in.

Well.

Yesterday, following a long phone conference, I quickly ran downstairs to see how Susan was doing. As I ran through my list of things I always check on — does she need anything to eat or drink, is her oxygen tube crimp-free, are her legs comfortable, does she need to be shifted to a different position — I became acutely aware of the fact that during the prior 90 minute conference call, I had consumed roughly 1.5 litres of Diet Coke (with Lime, but the lime is not relevant to the story. Pay no attention to the lime.).

Clearly, it was time for me to use the restroom. Luckily, we have a restroom just outside the room (formerly the living room) where we have Susan’s bed set up. This restroom is also just off the entryway.

Do I even need to finish this anecdote? No? Well, I’m going to anyway.

Of course, since this was during school hours and Susan and I were the only ones home (and it’s not like Susan was going to come invade my privacy), there was no need whatsoever for me to close the door to the restroom.

So I didn’t.

No sooner had I embarked upon my moment of blessed relief, however, than the front door opened, and — naturally — in walked a nurse.

Now, the truth is, this anecdote could have ended quite uneventfully. The nurse would be walking from the entry to the living room, and would not be passing the restroom. Unless I did something stupid, she would not see me at all.

Let me reiterate: in order for me to remain unseen, all I had to do was just keep peeing. My best course of action was to make no change to my course of action.

Before I continue, I need to make three contextual points:

The restroom door swings out of the restroom, so that when open, the doorknob is nicely visible from the entryway.

As I stood and faced the toilet, the door was on my left.

While I am generally right-handed, I am not right-handed for certain activities. I have no explanation for this, and do not wish to elaborate further.

Not wanting to disappoint the thousands of people who would feel hurt and slightly betrayed if I were to behave rationally, I engaged, rapidfire, in the below sequence of events:

With my right hand, I reached left, stretching for the doorknob. It was too far.

I continued to pee.

I leaned left, reaching with my right hand, trying to get to the doorknob.

I continued to pee.

I made a magnificent effort, leaning and pivoting hard left, while reaching with my right.

I continued to pee.

I exposed myself to the nurse.

I made an inarticulate, strangling, gurgling sound, meant to convey surprise, embarrassment, and an apology for having greeted her in this manner.

Also, I peed on the floor of the entryway. And on the wall of the bathroom.

Finally — after what seemed like days of peeing and self-exposing — I reached the doorknob and closed the door.

You may be interested to know that, so great is my humiliation, that I have not since exited the bathroom.

fourth, your episode is kind of like that time norm from cheers interviewed for the job of beer taster at a brewery. all he had to do was drink some beer and shut up to get the job. he ended up dancing and singing knick knack paddywack give the dog a bone. the equivalent of peeing all over the wall and floor.

fifth, i am also right handed, except for hockey. for some reason, i hold a hockey stick left handed. but that’s the only stick i hold that way.

You truly tickled my funny bone tonight. I was laughing out loud and suddenly realized I really had to go pee. I ran to the bathroom, and even though I am home, with only my two sleeping children, I learned something very important from your post. I closed the door. See, so really today’s post is more of a public service announcement. Thank you once again for serving your community.

Once, back in my younger and more stupid days, I needed to pee. So did the friend I was with. We raced to the bathroom at the arcade. Alas, she won the seat on the throne. However, I could not wait so I hauled myself up on the sink. Which promptly fell off of the wall, breaking the water pipe and throwing me through the door. So there I was lying bare-a$$ed on the floor of the arcade with the fine mist of water from the sink pipe spraying me! Not one of my finer moments.

I inferred that Susan was going to yell at you (which my wife did and does because I continue to pee without closing the door) and thus in you explanation, pee on the floor. I was wrong and your story is much funnier. Thank you.

An epic tale Mr. Fatty – and now a poorly written limerick:
There once was a man named Fatty
Who needed to pee made rather badly
A nurse came through the door
Fatty peed on the floor
While dancing like Michael Flately

It’s not called a washroom. He obviously wasn’t in there to wash. Until after the fact. At which point he also had to wash the floor and wall. And the poor nurse, who wishes she could wash her mind, has that stain forever stamped upon her visual cortex.

Fatty, I have been reading you for a long time, amd have donated to LiveStrong largely because you are just plain inspiring.

You painted such a great picture of your peeing experience, I proceeded to pee my pants. Keep it up, man, and never ever feel obligated to write. What I get I enjoy (even the tough stuff), but when it’s harder to post… I get it, bigtime.

Oh how I hope the nurse has a blog of their own so we can read the other side of this story!

This is why I pee off the front porch. No doors to worry about.

At the high school I went to in Australia, it was tradition that on the last day of school everyone would stay out all night getting drunk (drinking age being 18 meant that it was legal for pretty much all of the graduating high schoolers to be of legal age, and the cops turned a blind eye to the rest for one night). Tradition also stated that the worse-for-wear students would go to the head teachers house early in the morning, at which point breakfast would be provided.

After all of this drinking, one of my school chums needed to go wee wee. He thought it weird and embarassing to ask the head teacher if he could use her bathroom. So, to spare himself the embarassment of asking her, he unzipped and tried to indiscretely piss of the side of her balcony. Which is kinda hard to do when you’re exposing yourself to 20 or 30 of your teenage classmates down below, who are having to jump out of the way to avoid getting pissed upon.

He’s now a biochemist or geneticist or something very complicated like that.

I ditto what everyone has said. Thanks for the great start to the day. I’m dying to know the nurse’s reaction. Sure, she’s seen plenty of guys pee…but probably hasn’t watched them pee on the floor right next to the toilet with mouth agape! Have her read your blog and make a comment!

I by the way, I meant to add that to me, one of the funniest things was the Mission Statement you wrote for Bike Snob, because that’s EXACTLY what I’ve thought of his blog! I go back and forth between yours and his (but I enjoy yours much more).

I have a similar story, only I was completely unclothed and it was in front of a couple I had just met that night. The details are a not suitable for this family blog, but the look on the young ladies face was priceless. She seems to blush every time I run into her. Can’t imagine why.

I was once in a study that required me to void my bladder and collect the contents in a beaker. I am consistently hydrated and they only gave me a 500ml beaker. I filled it and had to cut it off midstream to go get a second beaker.

I was telling this story for some reason and my 4 year old son was around. When the conversation ended I mentioned that I needed to go to the bathroom.

My son turned to me very seriously and asked, “Dad, are you going to cut your penis off again?”

It took me awhile to figure out what he was talking about, and then it took some explanation.

hehehe, made my day that did. At least you will eventually have to get off the toilet unlike that women in Ness City who sat on the throne for 2 years.. that is unless you have a secret boyfriend that you haven’t been telling us about. :P Have a good weekend!

Hmmm…I’d be willing to put a mission statement on my blog, ;-) but I’m not very good at writing up mission statements.

So, you are a master at humiliation. You had me staring at the monitor in disbelief. I kept wondering, “When is he going to miss the toilet?” and it happened! OH, GOSH! That must not have been fun to clean up.

Mayonaisse as the ultimate condiment? Flawed mission from the start, Eldon, which is why it is so refreshing that you’ve compensated for that mistake by bringing your family into this. They’ve re-written the mission statement in a way none can dispute. The world is better for that mistake.

But it’s also important to keep the world straight when it comes to condiments, and you’ve given some bad advice. Mayo is just fine for mixing with catsup to make “fry sauce” at the McDonalds in Kimball Junction, but it pales in comparison to the Big Two. Mayo is a distant third, even my home-made mayo, which shreds even Hellman’s.

Beautiful story. Fatty, it’s been a while since we laughed with you…uh…at you? Nah, as guys, we have all pulled something of that sort. My son managed to pee so enthusiastically that he peed all over the top of the toilet tank and the wall behind it. Sounds like you have competition in the making…

When are people going to learn? Being a plumber but also being well read, I cam across a little booklet years ago called “The Specialist”. Here a guy that built outhouses for a living describes the how to and WHY, he did things the way he did.

His big rule, and you need to read the book, the door always swings in, not out. I think you know why now Elden.

But don’t worry because being married to one, nurses have seen it all.

Approximately 100 years ago my husband and I were riding TOSRV on a tandem. I was insulted that men were so easily able to “go look at the corn” as needed.

Well, it was after being properly [over-properly?] hydrated that I needed to look at the corn, too. Beside the road, downhill a ways, I thought I found the proper coverage. Not so much, I guess. As I stood to recommence our ride I heard [complete with Doppler effect] a fellow cyclist shouting to his mate “OMG! Did you see that woman?!” I took it as a compliment.

Frigging hilarious! I am not going to get this image out of my head all day.

My friend, who taught emotionally desturbed middle schoolers, caught one of her students doing the ‘helicopter’ in their self contained classroom bathroom. Needless to say, she sentenced him to a month of bathroom cleaning side by side with the janitor. Perhaps a punishment of that kind is in order?